When they first met, Graydon James and Laura Spink had no idea that they would be married one day — much less touring the world together as The Young Novelists. Since the band’s inception in 2009, they’ve played stages across the U.S. and Canada, released three full-length albums, won numerous awards and continuous praise for their unmatched, effortless harmonies. But for their new album in city & country (released May 4th), the Toronto-based band decided to travel out of the city and in to small-town Ontario in order to connect the two places. After years of firsthand experience combined with historical research, James and Spink wrote over 30 songs inspired by a dozen Canadian towns. From that set, in city & country was born — a collection of ten songs that tell the universal stories of both parallels while highlighting the differences, similarities, and everything in-between. Here, Graydon answers his Essential 8 where he shares the story behind their album's title and talks about songwriting, the road, fan art, and more.
Is there a story behind your album’s title? Yes! As with almost anything we do, we try to give it a double meaning. The album is titled "in city & country" and, on the surface, that's a reference to the fact that we went to a group of specific small towns in Ontario (our home province) and wrote songs inspired by those towns. There is a bit of compare-and-contrast between city life -- we live in Toronto now -- and country life, which is how we were born and raised. There's an additional side reference to the fact that we tour and play as a duo but also have a full band for certain shows, so there are the more full-band sounding "city" songs and the more contemplative, harmony-based "country" songs on the album. Do you write about personal experience, the experience of others, observations, made-up stories, something else or a combination? I used to write almost exclusively about personal experience, which meant we had a lot of sad relationship songs, but I at least tried to give them some kind of twist: I usually told them from the other person's perspective. So it sounds like I've been in a lot of bad relationships, but really the songs are how the other person saw me, so I'm the jerk in the vast majority of the songs. But, for this album, Laura had a much bigger role in the writing and we were trying to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and write songs based on historical research, stories we heard from other people, and observations in the various towns we visited. To my mind, many of the songs have a stranger-than-fiction kind of vibe; the kind of story that gets told around the kitchen table in a conspiratorial voice. When/where do you do your best writing? Lately I've been finding that I will tool around with a song idea on guitar or piano for a little while and get nowhere with it. It's like banging my head against a wall for two hours. Then I'll take a break, usually go have a shower, and as soon as I step into the shower I get an idea for the first line. Then I have to sing that line through the entire shower for fear of losing it. I've heard stories about Prince, that he had a set up where he could record in any room of his house, and I completely understand that.
Favorite (or first) concert you have ever attended?
I saw a Canadian band called The Watchmen in my first year of university. I was impressed by the fact that they came on stage and played their two biggest hits right off the bat -- no messing around. It was a smart move because the folks who just came to hear those "hit" songs were satisfied and could go hang at the back of the bar while the real fans could get closer to the stage and revel in the rest of the set. Do you have a favorite gift from a fan? We have played a couple of times in a small town in New Brunswick called St. Andrew's-by-the-sea -- it's a beautiful maritime village -- and both times this young woman came to the show and sketched us as we were playing. She gifted us the drawings at the end of the show and they are really these amazing little character studies. It's really touching that she did that! What’s the most frustrating thing about being on the road? Probably explaining to people what it's really like being on the road. Plenty of folks have this sense that you get to see all the sights, but that's actually quite hard to do. There's just no time. You wake up, you drive, you load your gear into the venue, you find where you're going to sleep, you grab dinner, you play the show, you go to sleep and repeat. We have toured with our son (he's seven now), and brought my mom on a tour to help watch him while we played and it was eye-opening for her to see that it's largely a job and not so much an adventure. Don't get me wrong, there are times when you can enjoy a day or you get to town early and can check out the science museum (one of our favourite things to do!), but those are few and far between. Which means, as an artist, that you better love the job of touring if you are going to do it regularly. It's not everyone's cup of tea. Do you have any touring tips? One of the best tips I ever heard was from Jonathan Byrd: the time that Google Maps gives you for how long it will take to get to the next town is accurate if you are by yourself. For every additional person in the van, add 30 minutes to that time. That has been the case for virtually every leg of every tour I've ever done. What’s the best advice to give to a musician just starting out? Like most jobs, the part that you really enjoy (performing for some, songwriting for others, touring for a few) is a small portion of the actual work. There's a lot of e-mailing, spreadsheets, financial work, logistics, and administration. It's not necessarily hard work, but there's plenty of it, and if you want to have a successful career you'd better be okay with getting it done. The days of record deals are sort of gone, but honestly that's more exciting and better for artists in the long run. You have much more control over your career and you'll get out as much as you're willing to put in. Website/Facebook/Twitter/Insta
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